Borders launches Foursquare social networking campaign as SMEs urged to jump on board mobile marketing

Book seller chain Borders will use popular location-based social network Foursquare to offer discounts to regular customers, with one social media expert saying the campaign serves as a lesson in mobile marketing for smaller businesses.

The move comes as Foursquare’s popularity has surged in the United States, although its Australian user base is still trailing behind Facebook and Twitter. Borders’ campaign is one of the first major efforts of its kind in Australia.

Social media expert and DDB digital strategist Con Frantzeskos says using mobile marketing techniques like Foursquare, and even Google Maps, is essential for small businesses. They cost essentially nothing to run, and offer a massive return on investment.

“Location-based media isn’t anything new, because local area marketing has been around forever. But with things like Foursquare, it can be highly targetted. With such low distribution costs, the actual return on investment is huge.”

“It doesn’t matter if you don’t get a huge number of people coming in because the cost to set everything up is so small.”

Foursquare works by having businesses set up profiles themselves, or through users identifying locations. The more users “check in” to those locations by visiting regularly, the higher their score and number of achievements.

Regular visitors are also designed as a Foursquare “mayor” of that particular location. Some businesses are even getting in on the action by awarding their “mayors” discounts and other promotions – as Borders is doing now.

The company’s campaign will offer a 10% discount to every third check-in at a Borders store. The promotion will be held at all 26 stores and follows a number of users already checking into Borders on Foursquare already.

Communications manager at Borders parent RedGroup Retail, Malcolm Neil, says while the Australian user base isn’t huge, it still offers something useful and innovative to one of the company’s key demographics – younger, more tech-savvy readers.

“While it hasn’t really taken off yet, we think it’s a great way to offer more for our business. There is interest, and engagement, and Borders is the sort of demographic where people pick up on that sort of thing.”

Frantzeskos says the Foursquare iPhone app will make things easier for users, and even if it doesn’t work the company wouldn’t have lost much time and effort.

“I would suggest for other businesses, if they aren’t doing something similar to this, then they should. Any business with a physical presence should absolutely be involved in something like this, it costs nothing and delivers a good benefit.”

Ovum analyst Craig Skinner says the campaign serves as a good example of mobile marketing and notes that although Foursquare has been operating in Australia for just under a year, businesses shouldn’t ignore it.

“All it takes is the cost and time of the person setting it up. Particularly when businesses have customers aligned with this sort of technology, they can gain a lot from using a campaign like this.”